Archive

beyond big AI

Building on my goodbye, big tech journey, and buoyed by philosophical, political, and practical thoughts on the matter, I've been thinking: can I replace Big AI in my workflow with performant, cost-effective, and energy-efficient alternatives? I’ve been working with local models since they came out,

human-computer symbiosis

AIW: looked at one way, this is Yet Another Article about AI, and there are more than enough of those already. Still, as someone who eschews US-based Big Tech in his personal life and is at the same time responsible (and even happy to be responsible!) for leading AI-

servant leader, peer leader

People who go for leadership...may be viewed as one of two extreme types. There are those who are so constituted physically and emotionally that they like pressure — seek it out — and they perform best when they are totally intense. And there are those who do not like pressure, do

adversarial wordle

Every day, a new five-letter word is chosen, and players attempt to guess it within six tries. After each guess, the letters are color-coded to indicate their accuracy: green means the letter is correct and in the right position, yellow means it is in the word but in

trust and mistrust

Denmark is often mentioned as a high-trust society, the United States as a low-trust society. Having lived in both places for a number of years, you can feel the difference: in how public and private systems operate; in signage and instruction; in expressed opinions; in psychological safety; in

digital agency

It's been a while since I posted here! Due to a confluence of professional, geopolitical, and medical factors I ended up taking stress leave earlier this year. It was much-needed and enormously helpful, and I'm grateful that taking care of yourself is (mostly) normalized here

goodbye, big tech

Over the next couple of years, I'll be slowly moving away from Big Tech platforms and apps. In this post, I'll discuss why I'm doing this, and what it means in practice. This post is also an investigative exercise: what is my Big Tech

systems and individuals

Denmark has a sterling reputation as an environmentally-conscious wonderland of cyclists and minimalist design. And there is some truth to this! In Copenhagen, 64% of commuters travel by bicycle. Green initiatives such as disposable cutlery bans receive strong support, both in Denmark and in the rest of the EU.

on incompetence and malice

Hanlon's razor states: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. This popular adage focuses on the recipient of said stupidity. How many of us have felt that an impersonal bureaucracy is somehow working against us personally? Or that a friend meant to slight us,

inefficiency is sometimes the point

I've written on the ethos of slow travel before, and as I return to normal life after 3 weeks in South America, I'm drawn to write about a reflection I had while hiking the Martial Glacier near Ushuaia at the far southern reach of Argentina: inefficiency

slow travel

As Valkyrie and I sit in an old seaside cottage in the quaint village of Svaneke on Bornholm, I'm reflecting on how we often prefer to travel, and how it differs from the predominant jet-setter destination-oriented mode of travel. Yesterday we went to Pedersker Plantage to

thoughts on hype cycles

Big Data. Internet of Things. Blockchain and crypto. Chatbots. Smart home voice assistants. Augmented reality. Generative AI. These are just a few of the hype cycles I've seen during 15 years in the tech industry. Hype cycles are endemic in tech. Consumer devices and software are ubiquitous, and

11 paradoxes of engineering

Near the LEGO headquarters in Billund, Denmark, there's an employee-access-only corporate history museum called LEGO Idea House. There's lots of fascinating tidbits: a whole section on the company's genesis as a wooden toy outfit, early test moulds to experiment with different ways

Schengen ain't what it used to be

My wife and I were on the train back from a one-week bike trip in Germany and Czechia, and were crossing back into Denmark. As the train pulled into Padborg, multiple border officers boarded the train, systematically checking IDs - passports, residence cards, and so on. The unusual thing is

Carved in Stone

From the moment the Geological Anomaly became known to them, they each knew that it would be the focus of their all-too-short lives. Why had it been built? By whom, and for what purpose? For it was soon self-evident that it had been built: the enormous crystal

creative writing experiment #1

Way back in my first post on this new blog, I mentioned that my usual focus is technology and learning, though anyone following along will know that these are construed pretty damn broadly here. One of my goals for 2024 is to shift how I use my leisure time. Now,

a weakness is just a strength you haven't met

I've known many people in tech who fall victim to what I'll call the Stardew Valley fantasy: to amass heaps of cash and leave it all behind. Some dream of homesteading, others of running adventure travel or extreme sports businesses in exotic far-flung destinations, yet

the law of small annoyances

A little neglect may breed mischief ... for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost. We are all shaped by the things we spend our time on, both in the abstract

ends and beginnings

Day 30 of 30. There's a song I grew up with called Closing Time, and it has some relevant wisdom here: Closing time, every new beginning Comes from some other beginning's end, yeah This is the last day of my blog-post-a-day experiment: the

magic circles

Day 29 of 30. In discussions of play and game design, there's the concept of the magic circle. I'll defer to Johan Huizinga on the matter: All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or

snow and sandwiches

Day 28 of 30. Snow is on my mind today, and only partially because it's falling from the dark Copenhagen sky as I write this. This may sound like the most Canadian thing to say, but since we moved to Denmark one thing I've missed is

cognitive stopwords

Day 27 of 30. Back in my undergrad days at the University of Waterloo, I spent 4 cold, dark months at the Language Technologies Research Centre in Gatineau, Québec, working on statistical machine translation: the translation of human languages by computer. This was back in a time of transition from

advice from a lead engineer

Day 26 of 30. As a lead engineer, I often get asked what it means to be a lead engineer - and this mostly by senior engineers I work with, who are curious what the next step in their career might be. There are loads of fantastic resources out there like

belonging

Day 25 of 30. As an expat in a foreign land several timezones away from family, and a weird geeky dude in a world of seemingly more normal, less geeky people, it can be difficult to find a true sense of belonging. This can be true even when surrounded by

focus and pairing

Day 24 of 30. I was recently reading Hyperfocus, in which the author talks about two complementary modes of attention that are useful in modern knowledge work: hyperfocus and scatterfocus. It should be noted that, as a concept, hyperfocus both predates this book and is in broader use as an

thanksgiving

Day 23 of 30. One thing that's strange about living in Denmark is the uniformity of tradition. There are specific beats in the year, marked with precise rituals and songs, accompanied by set menus whose dishes reach back into the nebulous before. Herring, for instance, a fish that

time and money

Day 22 of 30. As a tech geek, I spend some time lurking around Hacker News, and like all groups Hacker News has a culture, and like all cultures that culture has its comfort zones and touchpoints. One of those is productivity porn: a particular type of content that valorises

D&D

Day 21 of 30. Aside from lead engineer and jugger coach / organiser, one of the other hats I wear is DM. Right now, I've got a Curse of Strahd campaign going with my partner and four friends. Here they are, having a good old time in Vallaki: And

edge cases

Day 20 of 30. I still remember some key advice one of the fine folks at Code for Canada gave me, back during our onboarding sessions: You know, when you dive deep enough, it's all edge cases - and each and every one of those edge cases is meaningful

fidelity

Day 19 of 30. A while back, when I was at Code for Canada, I had the good fortune to work with Luke Simcoe on a couple of blog posts and presentations - he was their Director of Communications at the time, and whenever someone brought something to him for review,

november

Day 18 of 30. There's a famous Danish poem called Året har 16 måneder (The Year has 16 Months), and it goes: Året har 16 måneder: November, december, januar, februar, marts, april maj, juni, juli, august, september oktober, november, november, november, november. And sitting in the dark, cold,

a culture of building

Day 17 of 30. I came across the article On Cultures That Build, which was written as a response to Andreessen's essay It's Time to Build, which itself was written in the early days of a pandemic that revealed many institutions, agencies, and systems across the

alignment

Day 16 of 30. Like millions of other people on this big, blue ball we call home, my partner and I are playing Baldur's Gate 3, which aside from being an excellent game is also one of the first D&D-based games not to include the

midpoints

Day 15 of 30. That makes this the midpoint of my month-long blog-post-a-day experiment. Unlike many real-world projects, the goal of this one is deceptively simple: write one blog post a day. No complex dependencies, no stakeholder meetings or sign-offs, just me and my

do less, better

Day 14 of 30. I've received a lot of advice of the years from parents and teachers and mentors and friends, but one piece - this from one of my music teachers back in high school - sticks out to this day: do less, better. We surround ourselves in distractions

perspective

Day 13 of 30. I'm actually writing (and posting) this on Nov 14, which for those keeping close track is not the 13th day of November, and that's just fine. Back in my Day 3 post about habits and routines, I talked about being open with

deckbuilding

Day 12 of 30. I've recently been diving back into a favourite game of mine, Slay the Spire. It's a deckbuilding roguelike: you ascend the Spire, fighting monsters using your deck of actions, and building that deck along the way. The monsters and paths through the

pushing

Day 11 of 30. Chances are, unless you've discovered some 10-dimensional lifehack, there are things you feel pulled to do, and things you have to push yourself to do. It doesn't take a lot, for instance, to convince myself to take 30-45 minutes each

forests and trees

Day 10 of 30. Working from home today, in my apartment near Amager Fælled, which is part of this massive park chain that runs 20-ish km down to the quaint fishing village of Dragør. There are forests and trees and lakes, and as I type this I'm

cross training

Day 9 of 30. I'm at that age where you're too young to consider yourself old, and too old to consider yourself young, which one could say is definitionally middle-age. So as a middle-aged guy, one who spends most of his workday sitting (or

velocity

Day 8 of 30. So far, I'm successfully producing one blog post per day, often 500-1000 words of hopefully coherent text, mostly themed around a mix of tech and work culture and leadership and learning. Where is it going? What direction is this headed in? I'

imposter syndrome

Day 7 of 30. Two of my favourite YouTube channels are Mind Your Decisions and 3Blue1Brown, both of which walk the viewer through interesting concepts and problems in mathematics. As a self-professed geek of many stripes, including the mathematical, I think there's something wonderful about problems where

to-do lists

Day 6 of 30. It's challenging to find time to sit down, think, put words to screen in the middle of a busy work week. Part of the life of a lead engineer is keeping track of everything to do. This isn't really a Lead Engineer

taylorism that cares

Day 5 of 30. It's Sunday, which in some traditions is a day of rest, but the exact day doesn't matter; the idea that we deserve time to slow down and take a break is enshrined in a wide variety of belief systems, both religious and

the new old web

Day 4 of 30. Getting back into the rhythm of writing every day brings me back 14 years to when I wrote In Silico as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it's commonly shortened. Back then, I wrote In Silico using Google Docs. Google Docs

habits and routines

Day 3 of 30. It's slowly becoming a habit: after work, take 30 min to write a blog post. Actually, the first two posts took 66 min and 36 min. I know this because I use Toggl to track time on both work and personal projects, this blog

coaching

Day 2: another day, another blog post. I might have mentioned before that this whole blog-post-a-day thing was inspired by National Novel Writing Month, but I didn't mention the other piece: I did NaNoWriMo wayyyy back in 2009, writing a vaguely cyberpunk-tinged exploration of

hanabi

So this blog post is the start of a month-long experiment. In honour of NaNoWriMo, I've decided to post here daily during Nov 2023. Short is OK. Semi-coherent is OK. Missing a day and catching up the next is OK. The goal is that, by 11:

true autonomy is a balancing act

So it turns out humans are, by default, pretty bad at nuanced thinking: we love all-or-nothing, black-and-white, good-versus-evil.  Feels nice and simple, refreshing in a complex world.  Too bad it's useless in most modern real-world situations. In the tech industry, one

new blog!

Welcome to my new blog: candu can do. It's my personal creative outlet. I write for myself first and foremost, and if it finds an audience - well, that's OK too. I tend to write about technology and learning, with not-so-occasional detours into whatever else